Saving Elephants, Ennobling Albany

There is a story taking shape in the New York State Legislature. It does not involve campaign donations, wiretaps, no-show jobs or the United States Attorney Preet Bharara.

It involves elephants. Stick with us here. This is about a modest but heartening development in a place better known for its crooked deals and other abuses of democracy. Some students at Pace University in Pleasantville, N.Y., have not given up on the Legislature. They believe they can, through reason alone, get it to ban the use of elephants in performances in New York.

These citizen activists, students at the university’s Environmental Policy Clinic, have written a bill and they have persuaded two Westchester County lawmakers to sponsor it — an Assembly Democrat, Amy Paulin, and a Senate Republican, Terrence Murphy. Because each belongs to the majority party in his or her chamber, the measure has a head start; in the divided Legislature, most bills waste away and die in the house they were born in.

The bill’s premise is that the circus is no place for an elephant. Ask the students why, and they will tell you about the bullhook, a needle-sharp prod used to control elephants through pain and intimidation. They will talk about the elephants’ confined isolation on the road — chained misery for sensitive creatures that, in the wild, roam widely and live sociably in family herds. A society that truly values such dignified, endangered creatures, they say, would leave humiliating animal acts behind.

An awakening, in fact, has already begun: Bowing to public pressure, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus retired its elephants this month, years earlier than it had originally planned, sending its lumbering troupers to retirement in Florida. SeaWorld, its reputation savaged by a documentary about the suffering of orcas at its marine parks, is ending its orca-breeding program.

The students considered other approaches — outlawing just the bullhook, say, or pursuing legislation at the county level — and decided the most effective way to make a difference was a statewide ban. New York would be the first state to do what some cities have already done.

To those who say, “Forget it, Jake, it’s Albany,” the students say their motives are clean. They’re not trying to get their relatives hired or to short circus stock.

School is ending soon and some of the students are graduating, but they all say they will continue the campaign, going up to the Capitol to lobby before the legislative session ends in June. Senator Murphy’s office said the bill should be introduced this week or next, maybe around the time that the former Senate leader Dean Skelos is sentenced for bribery, extortion and conspiracy.

What an opportunity these students have given the Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to enlighten some minds, help some elephants and polish a little of Albany’s blackened soul.